“Learn to be embarrassed by little and sorry about even less.”

“I'm sorry I'm not more cultured. I'll watch PBS. And cut people open for fun. Will that be better? Will you be less embarrassed to be my fledgling then?”

“Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.”

“Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which he floated with log-like calm.”

“Imagine that we could revive a well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century. The man would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith. His beliefs about geography, astronomy, and medicine would embarrass even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know about God.”

“I was about six years old, still Daddy's little girl, even though Daddy couldn't care less about me. How could I expect any man every would?”